As you can tell, I’ve finally got around to putting up version 18 and this “grand” revamp I’ve been working for a very long time. There’s probably still some issues here and there, but it’s mostly done. I hope everyone enjoys the rearrangement and redesign. Let me know if there are any outstanding issues.

PS: I’m looking for fresh ideas for Photoshop brushes. I’m also going to try to, here and there, convert my brushes for PhotoFiltre Studio - because so many of you have been begging me to.

So I’ve spent the last hour or so going through old posts and categorizing and tagging them. It’s rather weird looking back on old posts like that and in more than one case I’m rather embarrassed with myself. However, it is fun to look back on how things were a few years back - that’s the only reason I keep those posts around.

I’m still working on various things and it’s going grudgingly slow. Part of the problem is that I am so particular about details. I spent thirty minutes earlier fussing over the sidebar (Wordpress insists on putting nested lists there for my blogroll and I do not want that).

I have the entire day to myself tomorrow so I’m really hoping that I can manage to get everything put together.

I am planning something special for next week, and if all goes as planned, I will have a whole week’s worth of blogs. I’m quite excited about it and as soon as I had the idea while trying desperately to amuse myself in Biology this morning I became rapt with the idea.

I simply cannot wait.

I’m also trying to figure out what I want to do here. Ideally, I want to move all the posts here to At0mica.net instead of having a separate blog, which seems sort of stupid. It’s going to take some “finangling” (heh, American slang for messing with / fiddling with) to get the posts to import properly, though. You see, I’ve already got some posts in the WP installation for At0mica.net and those posts will have the same IDs as some posts found in this WP installation, and that will be a problem when I go to import posts from here. I don’t want any posts to lose their way between here and there, and so I’ll have to figure out what to do with these “overlap” posts. I really want to get a new layout up on At0mica, move this blog over there, and then have my little special thing next week. Of course, as usual, this is just what I’d want to happen ideally and, also as usual, something might come up or… well who knows what. We’ll see.

In other news, I’m building a PHP event calendar as part of my job and I’m thinking that if it turns out well enough I may decide to put it up for download. I’m quite happy with just getting as far as I have with it, even if programming in python these past few months has made it incredibly frustrating with the whole semicolon situation in PHP. (Python does not require semicolons at the end of lines/commands where as PHP does. For instance, if I wanted to make the screen print a sentence in python:

print "Hello this is a line of text in the command prompt."

While in PHP, there’s a semicolon at the end:

echo "Hello this is a line of text - don't forget the semicolon!";

It just gets irritating because I’ll be coding along in PHP and load it up in my browser only to get several errors screaming at me for forgetting the semicolons. At least I have the logic right, I guess.

I say … and you think … ?

1. Voices :: In your head.
2. Have to :: go to work.
3. Machine :: Gun.
4. Seventh grade :: Logan.
5. Beach :: Sand.
6. Roommate :: Megan.
7. Cyclone :: Cyclops.
8. Theater :: Fancy, ornate woodwork.
9. Pregnant :: Woman.
10. Phoebe :: Character from Friends.

Ick, I guess you could call me blog-orexic lately because of the fact I hardly blog. It’s not really that I don’t want to, but just that I don’t really think about doing it like I used to. It used to be like, “oh wow, I’ve got to blog about this later!”. Now exciting things happen but I hardly write about any of it. I hardly even posted about my fantastic trip to Chicago.

My best friend (Wrylie) is out in California visiting some relatives and we all miss her very dearly. So a friend (Jake) and my sister (Candace) all went to random places around town with a sign we’d made that said, “Come home Wrylie!” We went to all the places that Wrylie hangs around and took pictures of us holding the signs and then posted them on Facebook. I really need to get a Flickr account to post all these things on as well, but it’s just not been my top priority. Anyways, Wrylie really loved the photos and she’ll be back on the 8th of August. Wonderful Jake, Candace and I also stopped by the famous Hooters while we were out. The food was great, as usual, and we even got the fries free because it took them 30 minutes to get them to us. Jake decided it’d be funny to take a menu and a jar of hot sauce, so now Jake has some Hooters souvenirs. I can’t get over how funny it is that Jake now has a Hooters menu in his basement.

David and I have been hanging out a lot lately, not that I’m complaining. Yesterday we played lots of Super Smash Brothers (SSB). I even came within 50% damage of beating him, but alas: no. I did beat his brother, Steve, though. That was a really glorious victory. Random SSB fact: my favorite character is Kirby.

I’ve been messing around with At0mica a lot lately, of course none of it is stuff anyone would see as I have yet to deal with putting any of it up yet. I’m desperately trying to make a new layout. I had one made and then… I decided I didn’t like how I’d made up the navigation, so I abandoned it. It’s a really nice layout, however, so to at least get something out of it I may sell it… or put it up for a free Wordpress theme or something. Of course, being a poor college student now, any money is nice. We’ll see. I just can’t ever find something I really like for a layout anymore, I guess maybe I hold my standards too high for my layouts on At0mica nowadays. Or something. Who knows?

I have stuff to work on so I’ll cut this short. At least this is a post, right?

Well, I got back from Chicago on July 2nd. It was a blast. I ended up getting in the top 15 in the nation in web site development. I was disappointed that I didn’t make it in the top 10, but top 15 is great, too. (The kids that made it in the top 15 used fancy Flash and crap of that nature, even though Flash isn’t nearly as accessible as my all XHTML+CSS layout… but I’ll save that rant for another day.) I can still brag about being in the top 15.

So Happy 4th of July to everyone. I hope you’re having (or had) a good one. Mine’s been okay. I got to set off nearly all my family’s fireworks, as usual. Everyone else is either a) too scared, b) too lazy, c) too lazy and scared to set them off so I sort of get stuck doing it. I’m always afraid one of these times I’ll get my hand blown off, but oh well - such is the thrill, I guess.

After a very long time, I’ve finally got a new brush set in the works. As well as a new layout for At0mica.net. I haven’t updated the layout there since… well since I went to Washington D.C. for History Day in June of 2006. Wow. Anyways, I’m only using my own photography in this layout. I’ve got some lovely photos from my trip to Chicago as well as some other ones I’ve been dying to use and I believe it’s pretty good. I’ve got it all done up in Photoshop, and I’m going to sleep on it and if I still like it when I get up tomorrow I’ll code it. I’m also going to move the brushes back to At0mica.net - I’m tired of dealing with it. Despite writing a very detailed tutorial on how to use my brushes in PhotoFiltre, people are still griping and complaining, “Heather I can’t figure it out!!!1!!1!” and “Heather WTF I can’t figure out how to download the brushes!!!1!!!!3142123!” So, fine. I’ll put them up, they’ll get stolen, I’ll have to spend days tracking down the initial culprit, but at least that saves me from having to answer all these extremely stupid emails. I also apologize but I’m also not going to put forth the effort about asking for translations/coding up translations/ect. for the terms/conditions because I’m even getting complaints about the one translation I have - “Heather that’s the WRONG translation, that’s not right, you should really fix that!!” I figure if it’s not there at all, I won’t have to deal with those emails, either. I mean… I appreciate feedback… but it’s all a lot of work that I just don’t have time for. Especially when I can’t even figure out of the translation is “right” or not because I don’t even speak the languages that they’re being translated to. I’ll do away with the silly password business. I’ll do away with the having to “agree” first. Whatever, I’m tired of dealing with it. I’ll also be ‘tossing’ any sets that I originally used stock photography/other stuff to make brushes from. Just my own stuff. All mine. All original.

Jeminy, it’s late. I’m tired. Time to get back on this horse that is At0mica.net - it’s been too long. I’ll save that for tomorrow.